Increasing numbers of consumers are taking advantage of network-based, and Internet-based travel services that offer lodging, transportation reservations and ticketing directly to customers over the Internet. With such a service, a customer, using a computer connected to the travel service via the Internet, can purchase travel services/products from a dynamically changing inventory of services and products, such as hotel rooms, airline fares, car rentals, etc. Typically, such a travel service cooperates with a centralized computer reservation system (“CRS”). A CRS is a system/service that communicates with travel agents or transportation services for the purpose of providing up-to-date rate plan data, including a room rate (price for a hotel room on a particular date), fare (price for a trip or combination of routes comprising a trip), schedule (date and time of arrival and departure of a trip or flight), rules (which room rates and fares are valid under which circumstances) and availability (capacity for a particular trip or flight or hotel to provide accommodation at a particular fare or rate) in response to a query. This information is provided to the CRS by the lodging provider or transportation carriers, typically through third parties; however, a travel service can also cooperate with other databases, such as a local database reflecting specific relationships between carriers and the travel service, e.g., such as discount contracts or incentive programs. Accordingly, an Internet-based service can have access to many sources of travel inventory and prices. The CRS, may also be used to reserve and/or book travel components in travel packages, i.e., groupings of flight, hotel, car rentals, and or other travel services/products.
The business environment of a travel service is such that there are numerous ways of providing the same or a similar end-product to the consumer at a variety of prices. Due to travel provider-driven preferences, it may be cost-effective to price similar inventory differently. As an example, in the case of hotel reservations, the pricing structures are complex and dependent on a number of different variables, including check-in date, length of stay, availability, etc. Moreover, the prices among hotels can vary greatly depending on the season, events scheduled near the hotel, as well as the hotel's location and amenities. In the case of airline reservations, the number of ways that a consumer can travel from point A to point B is great when the number of airline carriers, different travel paths, hub locations and other particulars are considered. For this reason, the price of a particular hotel room, or flight segment from point A to point B, or other travel service/product may vary considerably across time, lodging providers, airline carriers, and the like.
Further, compounding price variations are price sensitivities, which can reflect, for example, an increase in demand for rooms reserved proximate to check-in time, or tickets reserved proximate to departure time. Additionally, incentive and discount programs negotiated with individual carriers and lodging providers can further affect the price offered by a travel service. Also, certain classes of room and flight inventory may have associated high or low demands, or high or low volume sales. Still further, rooms and flights included in a travel package may be eligible for further discounts over those not purchased as part of a package.
In addition, there are numerous consumer-driven preferences that can affect pricing as well. Some consumers will value individual characteristics of a given item of inventory differently. For example, in a hotel setting some consumer may prefer a particular hotel company, while others may only consider the location of the hotel. In the case of airline tickets, a consumer may not value when the flight (flying from one place to. the next) takes place, whereas another consumer may value a particular carrier over all others. These preferences can be factored into flights offered when the consumer specifies their preferences. For these reasons and others, there are numerous factors that can affect the value of the same or similar end-product.
In a conventional Internet-based travel service, a consumer enters very specific information concerning desired travel provider inventory, such as the type of hotel, and check-in and check-out dates. The Internet-based travel service queries remote servers for inventory that matches that specific query. In turn, the remote servers perform searches of their inventory databases to find matches for the query and return results to the Internet-based travel service for viewing by the consumer. However, a traditional remote server search in response to a query is limited.
One limitation results from the fact that previous attempts to present travel service information online have not always provided accurate real-time pricing and availability to consumers. Even when accurate travel service/product availability and pricing is capable of being provided in real-time, a still further drawback of previous solutions to providing travel service information online has been the inability to provide the consumer with meaningful comparisons between different rooms, flights, and the other services used while travelling. Obtaining information for individual travel services typically requires the consumer to navigate numerous Web pages, and only near the end of the process is a price provided. Most consumers have discovered that it is inconvenient and inefficient to follow this series of Web pages for various travel services for comparison purposes.
Some travel service providers have sought to address the problem by presenting pricing and availability information graphically in a weekly or monthly calendar format. However, the amount of detailed information presented is quite large, and is challenging for the typical consumer to digest without spending an inordinate amount of time, particularly when taking into account all of the price variations and sensitivities that can affect the pricing of a particular travel service/product on any given date. Moreover, presenting detailed information requires a higher degree of precision in determining the exact rates that cannot always be achieved in real-time.
In the context of advertising, some travel service providers have sought to address the problem by presenting pricing information graphically in a color-coded, shaded weekly or monthly calendar format. However, such information is necessarily static, and cannot convey up-to-the minute availability and rate changes that reflect changes in the market from one day or week to the next.